Closer
by hazeltwist
Summary: Uzumaki Naruto, carrier of a demon fox from the day of his birth. He has discovered the ability to tap into this monster's unimaginable powers, but the more he reaches out to the fox, the easier it becomes for the fox to reach out for him...
1. The Dangers of Fish

Author's Note: As I promised, I've begun the rewrite of 'What Were You Saying?' as an actual fic. With... yu know. Verbs. And adjectives. Annnnnd pretty much all that stuff besides dialogue. Uhh, but still with dialogue. AND also, just so yu all know, since I used all those fantastic boring titles such as The River (chapter one of WWYS), and I refuse to use them again here, you'll all be getting titles that have either little or jack squat to do with the chapter content. But it's more fun that way, anywho.

Disclaimer: For fear of being sued and this fear alone, I admit I do not own Naruto.

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**1. The Dangers of Fish**

"You're going to fall."

"Will not."

Haruno Sakura sighed and walked over to the railing, turned her back to it and hopped up to sit. She eyed her teammate warily as he came foot over foot her way before carefully turning and balancing his way back across the beam. With his arms held out wide at his sides, Uzumaki Naruto looked like he was about to leap off and start flapping. Sakura stifled a giggle and immediately found something to take her attention off the funny mental image.

Sasuke, Sakura's other teammate and the sole survivor of the Uchiha clan stood a good ten feet away, his back to the bridge's rail with his elbows propped up upon it. He was facing forward but could see Naruto nearing him from the corner of his eye.

"You're going to fall on me." He said with a bit more annoyance this time.

"I said I'm not going to!" The blonde spat back angrily, deliberately moving closer to Sasuke and silently daring him to get nervous enough to step out of the way.

He didn't move. Naruto snorted and stepped forward, watching his balance carefully as he approached. Sasuke remained motionless, and finally Naruto had gotten so close he had no other choice but to step over Sasuke's arms. The darker boy smirked in silent victory, but the smirk was quickly replaced with a grimace of pain as the blonde's foot 'accidentally' caught him in the back of the head as Naruto took another step.

Sakura saw the look her crush shot at the other boy's retreating back and immediately hopped off the rail and rushed towards them both. She had spent enough time with the both of them to see a fight coming from a mile away. In her hurry she skidded past Sasuke a few inches and swung around to face him, effectively taking his attention off of Naruto.

"Sasuke-kun! When do you think Kakashi-sensei will get here?" She asked, clasping her hands in front of her and smiling brightly.

Sasuke turned angry eyes from Naruto to the girl in front of him and snorted. He turned his head away and spat. "Who knows."

As Inner Sakura pumped her fist in pride of herself for diverting a potential disaster, Naruto plopped down on the beam on the kunoichi's other side, feet swinging lazily a good ten feet above the river water. He grinned at Sasuke, hoping to get a rise out of him but the darker boy wasn't looking. He turned to Sakura instead.

"Maybe Kakashi won't show up at all and we can have the day off, Sakura-chan!" He said hopefully, turning back to face the river. "And then you and me can go out together for food or something, and Sasuke can go home."

"I'm not going out with you!" She replied exasperatedly. She stepped back and crossed her arms over her chest, looking up at the sky. Within ten seconds she had slipped back into boredom. "Besides… he always shows up." She said after a moment, glancing at her teammate.

"But always only after he's hours late!" Naruto cried, swinging his legs back a little harder and banging his heels against the side of the bridge in annoyance.

"Yes… always." Sakura sighed and looked back up at the sky. Sasuke snorted and nodded his agreement, and Team 7 fell into silence.

Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Fifteen. It felt like an eternity. The chirping of the birds and the rustle of wind through the trees were the only noises that disturbed the quiet. It was maddening. Naruto was seriously thinking about just up and leaving, and wondering how much trouble he could get into for it when…

"Uwaaa!"

Splash.

Naruto hit the water sideways and disappeared momentarily under the surface. Seconds later he came up choking and sputtering. He had landed in a shallow area, and was tall enough to stand so that the water reached mid-thigh. He bent forward with his hands on his knees, eyes screwed up tight and stinging from the water as he coughed up the gallon or so of fluid in his lungs.

After a moment he straightened and opened one eye, keeping the other shut to prevent blood dripping into it from a new cut which crossed his eyebrow in a sort of X, before he wiped it away. He stood there sopping wet and looked up at the bridge.

"Sorry about that!" The darker boy shouted down with a smirk. "Must have accidentally pushed you when I stretched my arm out."

Both eyes open now, Naruto shot a glare of pure hatred at Sasuke, his anger so focused on the Uchiha that he failed to notice Sakura a few steps behind him with both hands clasped over her mouth. She was trying desperately not to laugh, and failing miserably.

The blonde boy somehow managed to pry his clenched jaw open, only doing so in order to curse Sasuke, his mother, father, and as much family as he could as many generations back as possible. And then maybe smack him up a little. But… he never got the chance. Just as he was about to shout every obscenity he knew…

_How nice._

Naruto froze. A cool, sly voice had cut through the tense moment like a kunai through flesh. Neither Sasuke nor Sakura had noticed Naruto twitch. In fact, they hadn't reacted to the voice at all, and for good reason, Naruto knew. He was the only one who could hear it.

'He's awake…' he thought to himself, momentarily forgetting that the fox could hear him.

_Yes, yes I am. I was dozing so nicely… and as I drifted back into your world, I found us perched atop the bridge in the middle of a wonderfully lazy afternoon… our feet dangling above gorgeous, crystal blue water... You ass. Now we're soaked. Oh no, no, no, Do NOT shake the water off like that! We're not a wet dog!_

'You really need to stop referring to us as _we._ We're not a _we_, we're you and me. SEPARATE BEINGS.'

_Separate drowned beings… you forget that when anything happens to _your _individual self, it unfortunately happens to _my _individual self as well. _

'Yeah yeah, whatever. And don't get on my case! It's not my fault, I didn't take a freaking dive into shallow water! How was I supposed to know Sasuke would push me in!'

"OI, DOBE!"

Sasuke, now the topic of the conversation, stood feet above the 'both' of them. He was bent nearly in half over the railing as he shouted down at his teammate, who was no longer responding to anything he said, or in fact to anything at all. He could have been unconscious if it weren't for his open eyes. And the fact that he was standing. Sakura had moved forward next to him and had begun shouting as well as the minutes went on and Naruto showed no signs of acknowledging the real world. After throwing out one last insult to try and get a rise from him, Sasuke stood back and shook his head, very much annoyed that his joke had only angered the other boy for a moment before the blonde lapsed into his own little world. He put a hand on Sakura's shoulder to silence her.

"Nevermind, he's not snapping out of it this time." He said as flatly as possible, trying to keep his disappointed annoyance out of his voice. It would seem childish to be bothered that a prank hadn't gone as planned.

With one last glance at Naruto's still form, Sakura sighed and stepped back as well. "He's such an idiot!" She shouted, clenching her hands into fists and stomping one foot in frustration. "I mean, I understand people like to daydream, but that wasn't exactly a kind of moment when someone would start fantasizing about… about… Ramen, or girls, or whatever he fantasizes about!"

Sasuke shrugged and put his back to the rail once again, stuffing his hands in his pockets and staring in the other direction. Sakura continued to complain about Naruto's most recent annoying habit, which led to a rant about all his other annoying habits. Sasuke tuned her out.

Down below, Inner Naruto was angrily shouting at his unwanted companion.

'It was NOT my FAULT!'

_You are an easy, and therefore tempting target, _dobe. _There's something real shinobi like to call 'defense'. Look it up in one of those scrolls your kind are so fond of._

'Don't use that asshole's word! And HAH! Shows how much you know, I don't read those boring scrolls!'

_Ah, so is this the reason you are an idiot?_

'Don't call me an idiot! ...And hey, if people are stupid to read the scrolls, and people are stupid anyway when they don't read the scrolls, then you're contradicting yourself!'

_No, I haven't contradicted myself. Your kind is doomed to be moronic. There is no escaping your mental handicaps. _

'Kind of the same way there's no escaping out of your cage, huh? Bastard fox!'

_Bastard dobe._

'Shut up!'

_Get out of the water before the fish eat you._

'Fine, fine, I'm going… and when I get up there I'm going to kick Sasuke's ass!'

_Well if you insist on suicide, then I am going back to sleep. I'd rather not be able to feel it when he beats you senseless._

Naruto barely heard a word of Kyuubi's parting as the fox sunk back into oblivion. Now conscious enough of his senses to be able to clearly see the back of Sasuke's arrogant head, his rage returned, double what it was, and in no more than three seconds he had leapt back onto the railing. With the element of surprise on his side, he managed to get in a fantastic flying kick to the back of the darker boy's skull. Sasuke was thrown forward and crashed into the opposite rail, though not hard enough to break the wood. He remained where he had hit for a moment before slowly straightening. He put his hand behind his head, and when he pulled it away it was colored scarlet.

'A bit late… but good enough.' Sasuke thought to himself with a smirk. Dark eyes met fierce blue ones, and both boys rushed forward like mad dogs whose restraints had been severed.

Twenty minutes later, Sasuke announced that whether Kakashi decided to show up or not, he wouldn't be staying to meet him. He stalked off the bridge and towards his home, leaving Sakura to bring the unconscious Naruto to the hospital, desperately trying to avoid getting blood on her clothes.

Life being funny the way it is, Kakashi showed up all of four minutes later and was met with an empty bridge. He stood and surveyed the area to make sure that in their anger, they hadn't planned a surprise ambush on him. No one was around.

One more glance out towards the forest… nothing. He shrugged to himself and lifted his hand to his face, removing his mask to scratch a really irritating itch, and took off towards Konoha, following the bright red trail that shined on the dirt.


	2. Your Dog is Dumber Than You Think

Author's Note: Chapters that are strictly Naruto-Kyuubi interaction only will be shorter.

Disclaimer: No. Not mine. Happy? Now I'm upset.

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**2. Your Dog is Dumber Than You Think**

Naruto woke late in the morning the day after the bridge incident. He sat up with a groan as he rubbed a particularly large bump on his head. It took him a moment to realize where he was, and another moment to remember why he was there, and why he was covered in bandages. He flushed red in a mix of anger and humiliation, though there was no one else in the room to see it.

'That bastard… that bastard beat me again.' He growled as memories of the fight surfaced. 'But not because I'm weaker… I'm _not_ weaker! I was just so pissed off I couldn't focus… yeah. First Sasuke shoved me off the bridge, and then Kyuubi just had to show up and make things worse.'

_Nnn… you call me?_

'Eee! Oh… oh man, you've been awake?' Naruto brought his hand to his mouth and began to bite a nail. So someone _was _there to witness him after his defeat.

_No… **you** woke me_. Kyuubi's voice rang with slight annoyance. _Heh, the inside of your head screams like a girl. Did you know?_

'My head…? Hey, does not!'

_Hn. Where are we?_

We're. Not. A. **We**. Shut up with the we already!

_Oh bitch, bitch, bitch. Fine, where are **you**, my dear carrier?_

Naruto's inner voice fell silent. He tried desperately not to think about the fight, or the fact that he was in a hospital due to the spectacular beating he received during said fight. Kyuubi would be sure to pick up on it. Instead he randomly thought of a dog chasing its own tail around and around in a circle. The dog continued this for about a minute before it finally tripped on a stick and tumbled over one side and back onto its feet. It shook its head and swayed a bit, before trotting off to find where the tail had gone. Naruto involuntarily thought of Kiba. He immediately burst out in his hysterical laughter; a laughter so hard that even though it made his already sore body throb even more, he couldn't stop and was soon leaning over the side of the bed giggling like mad and gasping for air.

Kyuubi couldn't decide if he was more disturbed by the sudden images of the retarded dog, or the insane cackling spurred on by the thought of the Kiba boy. Naruto was avoiding something…

_What are you hiding?_ If he had had eyes to narrow, he would have narrowed them. _Where are we?_

The laughing subsided so suddenly it was as if someone had pointed a remote at Naruto and clicked 'mute'.

'Uh… me. ME. And I'm… somewhere.'

A mental snort. _Oh really, how wonderful! I've been wanting to come here for so long, it's such a pleasure to finally have the chance to visit SOMEWHERE_.

'FINE.' Naruto almost whimpered in embarrassment. 'We're… in the hospital.'

…

'Happy now?'

…

'…are you there?'

…_he beat the shit out of you, didn't he?_

'He did not!' Yes he did. '…okay, I'm a bit sore, as you can tell. But nothing's broken! …I think… and I beat him just as bad!'

_Oh? And where is the Uchiha boy licking his wounds, I wonder?_

'…his kitchen?'

_You disgust me._

Naruto grumbled something unintelligible and fought down another blush. 'I'm going to sleep.'

_Didn't you just wake up?_

'No.'

_If you have the dream where you and the Uchiha are naked on top of a Skeeball machine again, I'm going to scream as loud as possible until your brain cells rupture._

The blonde nearly fell off the bed as that memory invaded his mind. 'Th-th-that happened ONE time! I-I had spicy food before bed!'

_Hn. Night._


End file.
